Where is the West and South Asia Regional Round of the John H. Jackson Moot Court Competition held?

The competition is held in Jodhpur, IND.

What level of education is required for participants in this competition?

The competition is open to college-level students.

What is the format of the competition?

The competition is a moot court format, focusing on simulated court proceedings related to international trade law.

24th John H. Jackson Moot Court Competition 2026 – West and South Asia Regional Round

Mar 17–20, 2026Jodhpur, IndiaIn-person

ConcludedRegistration closed

The John H. Jackson Moot Court Competition's West and South Asia Regional Round is an academic event focused on international trade law. It brings together college students from across the region to engage in simulated court proceedings, arguing complex cases related to the World Trade Organization (WTO) agreements. This regional round serves as a crucial stage for teams to develop their advocacy skills, deepen their understanding of international trade regulations, and potentially qualify for the global finals.

Country perspectives

Where the most-relevant 1 countries stand on the dominant committee topic. Click through for the full country profile.

India

As the host nation, IND plays a central role in facilitating regional engagement in international trade law.

Role in topic

IND's hosting of the regional round underscores its growing influence in international legal education and its commitment to fostering expertise in global trade. It provides a platform for IND's legal students to engage with peers from other nations and for the country to showcase its legal infrastructure and academic capabilities.

Topics & background

The history behind each committee topic and the states that shape it.

International Trade Law: Foundations and Contemporary Pressures

International trade law is the body of rules governing cross-border commerce among states, built on centuries of bilateral commercial treaties and consolidated after 1945 through the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and a dense web of regional and bilateral agreements. Its core principles — non-discrimination (most-favoured-nation and national treatment), tariff binding, transparency, and dispute settlement — were institutionalised with the creation of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 1995, which extended multilateral disciplines into services, intellectual property, and trade-related investment measures. Since the collapse of the Doha Round and the U.S. blocking of Appellate Body appointments from 2017 onward, the system has faced a legitimacy crisis. States have increasingly resorted to unilateral tariff measures, export controls, sanctions, and industrial subsidies justified on national-security or climate grounds. Plurilateral and regional agreements — CPTPP, RCEP, AfCFTA, USMCA, and the EU's network of FTAs — now carry much of the rule-making weight. Today the field grapples with reconciling open trade with decarbonisation (e.g., carbon border adjustments), supply-chain resilience (semiconductors, pharmaceuticals, critical minerals), and geoeconomic competition. The Jackson Moot tradition emphasises how WTO law, customary international law on countermeasures, and emerging FTA jurisprudence interact when states pursue these policy objectives.

Key players

United States
Architect of the postwar system; now leading user of national-security and industrial-policy exceptions.
China
Largest goods trader; central to disputes over subsidies, export controls, and non-market practices.
EUR
Major rule-maker advancing CBAM, anti-coercion instrument, and FTA expansion.
India
Key voice for developing-country flexibilities, special and differential treatment, and food-security carve-outs.
Brazil
Active WTO litigant defending agricultural market access and S&D principles.

World Trade Organization (WTO) Law

The WTO, established by the 1994 Marrakesh Agreement, administers the GATT 1994, GATS, TRIPS, and a suite of related agreements covering subsidies, antidumping, safeguards, agriculture, SPS, TBT, and trade facilitation. Its Dispute Settlement Understanding (DSU) was long considered the 'crown jewel' of public international law, producing a binding, two-tier adjudicative system through panels and the Appellate Body. Since December 2019, the Appellate Body has been paralysed by the United States' refusal to consent to new appointments, citing concerns over judicial overreach, treatment of zeroing, and prescriptive interpretations of trade remedies. A subset of members operates the Multi-Party Interim Appeal Arbitration Arrangement (MPIA) under DSU Article 25, but the United States and several major economies remain outside. The MC12 (2022) and MC13 (2024) Ministerial Conferences committed to restoring a fully functioning dispute settlement system by 2024 — a deadline that has slipped. Substantive flashpoints include the scope of GATT Article XXI national-security exception (after Russia – Traffic in Transit and the U.S. steel/aluminium panels), the legality of climate-linked trade measures, fisheries subsidies discipline negotiations, e-commerce moratorium renewal, and growing tension between WTO obligations and industrial-policy tools such as the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act and EU CBAM.

Key players

GATT 1994: Core Disciplines and Modern Disputes

The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade 1994 incorporates the original 1947 GATT together with subsequent understandings, protocols, and the 1994 Marrakesh modifications. Its bedrock obligations — Article I (MFN), Article III (national treatment), Article XI (prohibition of quantitative restrictions), Article II (tariff bindings) — remain the most-litigated provisions in WTO jurisprudence, alongside the general exceptions in Article XX and the security exception in Article XXI. Recent panel reports have stress-tested these provisions in politically charged contexts. Russia – Traffic in Transit (2019) established that Article XXI is justiciable but affords wide deference to invoking states. The 2022 U.S. – Steel and Aluminium panels rejected the United States' Section 232 invocation of Article XXI, a finding the United States has refused to accept. Article XX(g) (exhaustible natural resources) and (b) (human, animal, plant life) have re-emerged in climate-related measures, while Article III disputes increasingly target subsidies conditioned on domestic content. For moot purposes, GATT 1994 issues commonly arise where a state imposes import or export restrictions on strategic goods — critical minerals, semiconductors, agricultural commodities — and defends them under environmental, security, or development rationales, raising classic questions on 'like products', 'less favourable treatment', necessity testing, and the Article XX chapeau.

Key players

United States
Invoker of Article XXI for steel, aluminium, and semiconductor measures.
China
Respondent in landmark Article XX(g) disputes (Raw Materials, Rare Earths).
EUR
Frequent complainant and architect of climate-linked Article XX defences.
Russia
Respondent in the seminal Article XXI ruling on transit.
India
Active in disputes on quantitative restrictions, agricultural subsidies, and solar local content.

Critical Minerals and the Trade Law Frontier

Critical minerals — including lithium, cobalt, nickel, rare earth elements, graphite, and copper — are indispensable to electric vehicles, renewable energy infrastructure, advanced semiconductors, and defence systems. Reserves and processing capacity are highly concentrated: China dominates rare-earth processing and refines a majority of the world's lithium and cobalt; the Democratic Republic of the Congo supplies most cobalt ore; Indonesia leads nickel; Chile and Australia anchor lithium production. This concentration has turned mineral supply chains into a focal point of geoeconomic competition. Trade-law tensions have multiplied. China's export quotas on raw materials and rare earths were found WTO-inconsistent (China – Raw Materials, 2012; China – Rare Earths, 2014), yet export licensing and outright bans on gallium, germanium, antimony, and certain graphite products have since intensified. Indonesia's nickel ore export ban was ruled inconsistent with GATT Article XI in a 2022 panel report, which Indonesia has appealed 'into the void'. Western economies have responded with the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act, the EU Critical Raw Materials Act (2024), and the Minerals Security Partnership coordinating investment in friendly jurisdictions. The legal questions cut across GATT Articles XI and XX(g), the SCM Agreement (subsidies tied to domestic processing), TRIMs (local-content conditionalities), and Article XXI security claims. Moot scenarios typically pit a resource-rich developing state's industrial-policy ambitions against importing states' market-access rights and counter-subsidy responses.

Key players

Local Content Requirements under WTO Law

Local content requirements (LCRs) condition market access, subsidies, tax incentives, or licences on the use of domestically produced goods, services, or labour. Governments deploy them to build industrial capacity, capture value from natural resources, support nascent green industries, and respond to supply-chain insecurity. WTO law treats LCRs with significant scepticism: GATT Article III:4 prohibits less favourable treatment of imported products in laws affecting internal use; the TRIMs Agreement Illustrative List expressly identifies local-content conditions as inconsistent measures; and SCM Article 3.1(b) makes import-substitution subsidies prohibited per se. The jurisprudence is dense and consistent. Canada – FIRA (1984), Indonesia – Autos (1998), Canada – Renewable Energy / FIT (2013), India – Solar Cells (2016), and U.S. – Renewable Energy (2019) all found local-content conditions inconsistent with WTO obligations, including in climate-policy settings. Brazil – Taxation (2018) extended the analysis to tax-based incentives. Article XX defences — particularly XX(j) (products in short supply) and XX(g) — have not succeeded in saving LCRs. The issue is sharply contested today because flagship industrial-policy programmes — the U.S. IRA's clean-vehicle credits, the EU Net-Zero Industry Act, India's Production-Linked Incentive schemes, and various critical-minerals frameworks — embed content, sourcing, or assembly conditionalities. Moot fact patterns commonly examine whether such measures can be characterised as government procurement, subsidies, or technical regulations, and whether any exception or FTA carve-out applies.

Key players

United States
IRA clean-vehicle credits tie incentives to North American sourcing and assembly.
India
Respondent in Solar Cells; uses PLI schemes with domestic-value-addition thresholds.
Canada
Respondent in FIT; complainant against U.S. IRA content rules.
EUR
Net-Zero Industry Act and CRMA introduce sourcing benchmarks.
Brazil
Respondent in Brazil – Taxation on ICT and auto-sector incentive programmes.

Government Procurement in the Multilateral Trade System

Government procurement — purchases of goods, services, and works by public authorities — accounts for roughly 10–15% of GDP in most economies and has long been carved out of core WTO disciplines. GATT Article III:8(a) exempts procurement 'for governmental purposes and not with a view to commercial resale' from national treatment, and GATS Article XIII similarly excludes procurement from MFN, national treatment, and market-access obligations. Disciplines exist principally in the plurilateral Agreement on Government Procurement (GPA), revised in 2012 and binding only its 22 parties (covering 49 WTO members through the EU), and increasingly in FTA procurement chapters. The scope of the Article III:8(a) carve-out was substantially narrowed by Canada – Renewable Energy (2013), where the Appellate Body held that the procured product must be in a 'competitive relationship' with the product allegedly discriminated against for the exception to apply. This reading is central to disputes over green-energy and critical-minerals procurement schemes that bundle subsidies with sourcing preferences. Contemporary debates focus on 'Buy National' policies (Buy American expansion, EU International Procurement Instrument adopted 2022, India's Make-in-India procurement rules), reciprocal market access against non-GPA parties, and the use of procurement as an industrial-policy tool for strategic sectors including defence, semiconductors, and clean technology. Moot scenarios frequently test whether contested measures qualify as genuine procurement or function as disguised subsidies and LCRs.

Key players

United States
GPA party with expanding Buy American rules and Federal procurement preferences.
EUR
GPA party; deploys the International Procurement Instrument for reciprocity.
China
Non-GPA party in long-running accession negotiations.
India
Non-party; pursues Make-in-India procurement preferences.
Japan
Active GPA party advocating broader coverage and transparency.
South Korea
GPA party with significant SOE procurement coverage.

Preferential Treatment in International Trade

Preferential treatment denotes derogations from MFN that grant more favourable market access to selected trading partners. WTO law accommodates preferences through three main channels: GATT Article XXIV and GATS Article V on customs unions and free-trade areas; the 1979 Enabling Clause permitting Generalised System of Preferences (GSP) schemes, S&D treatment, and regional arrangements among developing countries; and Article IX:3 waivers approved by the Ministerial Conference (e.g., the LDC Services Waiver). Legal disputes have centred on the conditions under which preferences may discriminate among beneficiaries. EC – Tariff Preferences (2004) held that GSP differentiation is permissible only on the basis of objective criteria responding to recognised development, financial, or trade needs. Article XXIV jurisprudence (Turkey – Textiles, Peru – Agricultural Products) constrains the use of FTAs to justify otherwise WTO-inconsistent measures. The proliferation of mega-regional agreements (CPTPP, RCEP, AfCFTA, IPEF) and graduation policies in EU and U.S. GSP schemes keep the doctrine in active development. For critical-minerals and clean-tech supply chains, preferential treatment has acquired new salience: the U.S. IRA extends consumer credits to vehicles whose battery minerals are sourced from FTA partners or 'friendly' jurisdictions, prompting questions about MFN consistency, the legal effect of narrow critical-minerals agreements, and whether such arrangements qualify as FTAs under Article XXIV. Moot problems often require delegates to test the boundary between legitimate preference schemes and disguised discrimination.

Key players

Bilateral Critical-Minerals Partnerships and Trade Law

Bilateral critical-minerals partnerships have emerged as a distinct instrument of economic statecraft, designed to secure access to strategic inputs while sidestepping the political and procedural burdens of full free-trade agreements. The leading example is the U.S.–Japan Critical Minerals Agreement of March 2023, which the U.S. Treasury treats as an FTA for purposes of the IRA's clean-vehicle credit (Section 30D), even though it contains no tariff concessions and was not submitted to Congress as a trade agreement. The EU concluded a parallel framework with the United States (under negotiation), as well as Strategic Partnerships with Canada, Australia, Chile, the DRC, Zambia, Namibia, Argentina, Kazakhstan, and others. Similar arrangements include the Minerals Security Partnership and the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework's supply-chain pillar. These instruments raise significant questions in WTO and FTA law. Does a narrow, sector-specific agreement without tariff coverage satisfy GATT Article XXIV's requirement of liberalising 'substantially all the trade'? If not, do IRA-style preferences conditioned on sourcing from such partners violate MFN under GATT Article I:1? Conversely, can such partnerships be defended under Article XXI security exceptions, the Enabling Clause, or as Article XX(g) measures? China requested WTO consultations on the IRA in March 2024, putting these questions directly before the dispute settlement system. The partnerships also intersect with investment screening, export-control coordination, ESG and traceability standards, and resource-rich states' efforts to capture downstream value through processing requirements. Moot problems typically test whether a bilateral critical-minerals deal can lawfully ground discriminatory tax credits, procurement preferences, or subsidies, and how third states may respond.

Key players

United States
Architect of the IRA-linked critical-minerals partnership model.
Japan
First counterparty under the 2023 U.S.–Japan Critical Minerals Agreement.
EUR
Pursues parallel U.S. framework and a network of strategic partnerships under the CRMA.
China
Complainant against IRA preferences; dominant midstream processor.
Australia
FTA partner and major supplier integrated into Western minerals frameworks.
Canada
USMCA partner and joint participant in critical-minerals investment initiatives.

Key terms & resources

The concepts worth knowing before 24th John H. Jackson Moot Court Competition 2026 – West and South Asia Regional Round, plus lessons and profiles to go deeper.

Critical Mineral Critical Minerals Supply Chain Bilateral Cumulation Bilateral Investment Treaties Bilateral Patchwork Central-Local Relations

Country profiles

The states in play, with the data that shapes their stance

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Democratic Republic of the Congo

Country dossier

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Country dossier

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Frequently asked questions

Related conferences

24th John H. Jackson Moot Court Competition 2026 – West and South Asia Regional Round

Mar 17–20, 2026Jodhpur, IndiaIn-person

ConcludedRegistration closed

Country perspectives

Where the most-relevant 1 countries stand on the dominant committee topic. Click through for the full country profile.

India

As the host nation, IND plays a central role in facilitating regional engagement in international trade law.

Role in topic

Topics & background

The history behind each committee topic and the states that shape it.

International Trade Law: Foundations and Contemporary Pressures

Key players

United States
Architect of the postwar system; now leading user of national-security and industrial-policy exceptions.
China
Largest goods trader; central to disputes over subsidies, export controls, and non-market practices.
EUR
Major rule-maker advancing CBAM, anti-coercion instrument, and FTA expansion.
India
Key voice for developing-country flexibilities, special and differential treatment, and food-security carve-outs.
Brazil
Active WTO litigant defending agricultural market access and S&D principles.

World Trade Organization (WTO) Law

Key players

GATT 1994: Core Disciplines and Modern Disputes

Key players

United States
Invoker of Article XXI for steel, aluminium, and semiconductor measures.
China
Respondent in landmark Article XX(g) disputes (Raw Materials, Rare Earths).
EUR
Frequent complainant and architect of climate-linked Article XX defences.
Russia
Respondent in the seminal Article XXI ruling on transit.
India
Active in disputes on quantitative restrictions, agricultural subsidies, and solar local content.

Critical Minerals and the Trade Law Frontier

Key players

Local Content Requirements under WTO Law

Key players

United States
IRA clean-vehicle credits tie incentives to North American sourcing and assembly.
India
Respondent in Solar Cells; uses PLI schemes with domestic-value-addition thresholds.
Canada
Respondent in FIT; complainant against U.S. IRA content rules.
EUR
Net-Zero Industry Act and CRMA introduce sourcing benchmarks.
Brazil
Respondent in Brazil – Taxation on ICT and auto-sector incentive programmes.

Government Procurement in the Multilateral Trade System

Key players

United States
GPA party with expanding Buy American rules and Federal procurement preferences.
EUR
GPA party; deploys the International Procurement Instrument for reciprocity.
China
Non-GPA party in long-running accession negotiations.
India
Non-party; pursues Make-in-India procurement preferences.
Japan
Active GPA party advocating broader coverage and transparency.
South Korea
GPA party with significant SOE procurement coverage.

Preferential Treatment in International Trade

Key players

Bilateral Critical-Minerals Partnerships and Trade Law

Key players

United States
Architect of the IRA-linked critical-minerals partnership model.
Japan
First counterparty under the 2023 U.S.–Japan Critical Minerals Agreement.
EUR
Pursues parallel U.S. framework and a network of strategic partnerships under the CRMA.
China
Complainant against IRA preferences; dominant midstream processor.
Australia
FTA partner and major supplier integrated into Western minerals frameworks.
Canada
USMCA partner and joint participant in critical-minerals investment initiatives.

Key terms & resources

The concepts worth knowing before 24th John H. Jackson Moot Court Competition 2026 – West and South Asia Regional Round, plus lessons and profiles to go deeper.

Critical Mineral Critical Minerals Supply Chain Bilateral Cumulation Bilateral Investment Treaties Bilateral Patchwork Central-Local Relations

Country profiles

The states in play, with the data that shapes their stance

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier